Ethernet controlled garage door

[Thomas]’ garage door opener is a big old industrial unit, so he doesn’t have the convenience of a remote-controlled garage door opener. Obviously, this would get annoying after a while, so [Thomas] decided to build an Ethernet enabled relay board so he can open his door with his iPhone.

The build is based around an ATMega328 and a neat little Ethernet controller from Microchip. There are two relays on the board that connect to the Up and Down buttons on the door opener. The board receives UDP packets with instructions like, ‘RELAY 2 ON’ and the door responds accordingly.

Building just one of his boards cost [Thomas] the meager sum of $43. Considering the new Arduino Ethernet board costs around $60, we’re thinking he did a good job here. From the video after the break, we’re seeing that [Thomas] has to hold the button on his iPhone down for the door to go up. We see a few more pins on his AVR, so perhaps v.2 of his board could contain a few headers to attach sensors. Still, it’s a very nice build.

Your work with ENC28J60-I/SP is marvelous. Could you post the schematic or even better – the Eagle files. Interfacing the magnetics in a proven design like yours will be an incredible help in building low-cost Ethernet controllers. Geee ENC28J60-I/SP is only $3 and the magnetics can’t be that much more!

The reason he is having to hold the button down is because the “up” and “down” buttons are not just standard momentary switches, but he is treating them as if they are. The switches are actually specially wired for not only up and down, but also integrate a latch/release line that normally keeps the door direction latched until the limit switch releases when the door reaches the full up or down position.

Looks nice, and pretty cheap for an Ethernet board. The site says it’s compatible with the WizNet Arduino lib as well.

I haven’t heard of iStore before. Their site looks pretty legit, and the prices look really good too.
Some of the english is a bit disjointed, but they are based in China. Anybody have any experience with them? The site says airmail takes some time, as well.

lol i love all these people asking for the code and/or gerbers. it’s nice to see the owner holding his ground and not giving away hours of his development time/money.

think about it…i do the same kind stuff this guy does. if we were to give away our hours of development, who’s stopping someone in china to produce it for $0.10 an hour? everyone wants a free market, so this is the result (CLOSED SOURCE).

so beggers out there stop being so lazy and figure it out for yourself.

Or just plain retarded… You think the Chinese are so illiterate as not to be able to do some coding for their products ?

Everytime I see these kind of project without any diagram or code I wonder if the achievement is not in fact a total fakery or if it’s just the show off mentality. “lookyyy… but it’s MYYyyy prrrrrecious…”

and assclown on the bottom, where did i say the Chinese were illiterate? Fact: they have much cheaper labor Fact: they (not only them mind you) have been known to exploit ideas from other places (saves development time/money).

you saying “waah i want the source” is like saying “he may have spent hours/months/years learning how do make this, but i expect it all for free without having to spend my personal time/money/resources.”

you have a lot to learn about life kiddo… i suggest start by getting a degree and reading ENC28J60 and ATMega datasheets.

garage door? bah!
I’ve just built a twin spool indoor blind with serial connection to an ethernet arduino. all powered by an old external 5.25″ disk drive enclosure, which also has DMX and opto isolated mains switching!